FOSS Patents, "Leadership of European Patent Office blocks examiners' access to directory of potential prior art"
Florian Mueller wonders whether the two posts on the EPO that TechRights published shortly before the censorship played a role:
- July 10: EPO Appointments: Standards of a Third World Country
- July 3: Amid Controversy, Political Scrutiny and Increased Media Pressure Željko Topi? and Benoît Battistelli Allegedly Cancel Today's Trip to Zagreb (Croatia) Where Topi? Faces Many Criminal Charges
"TechRights has been around for almost a decade [...] and opinionated posts on policy issues are not the only thing it publishes. TechRights very frequently (mostly on a daily basis) provides link collections such as this one, which contain numerous technical news from the free and open source software community.[...] A patent office that is serious about patent quality should not take even the slightest risk that an examiner may, due to the blocking of a website, fail to identify prior art that could prevent a bad patent from issuing."
"EPO staff can still read TechRights at home or on mobile devices, a fact that makes this attempt at censorship absolutely ridiculous. But it should also have access from its desktop computers at work just in case anyone finds links to prior art there.The EPO leadership has just scored an own goal: by blocking access to TechRights, it has now raised the profile of that blog."